Breakfast with Diner
by Nonchey Niente
Summary: Johnny's encounter with a bottle of ketchup takes him places even HE could never have imagined - the next installment of "Tiger Balm for the Soul"


The Dead Zone and its characters are the property of Mr Stephen King and the USA Television Network.

This piece of fan fiction is created purely for amusement. Well, it certainly made ME laugh...!

This continues on from Johnny getting melancholy in the shower. Enjoy.

-oOOo-

Johnny soon discovered the main disadvantage of living alone and behaving like a teenager when he opened the refrigerator and found that he had run out of milk. Both disgusted and wryly amused with himself at the same time, he threw the empty carton into the trash and, after a very brief second glance in the refrigerator, decided on impulse to have breakfast at the Diner.

A scant half hour later, dressed, brushed and fresh faced, Johnny Smith sat himself at his accustomed table and fished in his jacket pocket for a knife, fork and spoon. He did so surreptitiously, aware that people could hardly help but stare at him, and not really wanting to fuel their conviction that he was nothing more than a poor brain-damaged eccentric, part of the local colour of Cleves Mills. But bringing his own cutlery was something of a necessity in a diner as popular as this one - mere contact with a fork or spoon, even after it had been in an industrial dishwasher, could be enough to send him straight off the edge and into a vision. If he had a mouthful of food at the time this could be at least embarrassing or worse, downright dangerous.

Johnny didn't have to touch the menu; he knew just what he wanted. Gladys brought him his food and placed it on the table in front of him with a cautious deference. She was aware of what could happen even through chance contact with him.

As he waited for his coffee, served in his own mug, John scanned the other people in the restaurant. He figured that if they were looking at him, he might as well do the same back. Most were regulars, people he knew by sight from having lived there so long and taught in the local high school. In the corner table next to his, a young couple were sharing a moment of unguarded tenderness, their food forgotten and congealing on the plates in front of them. It certainly didn't take exceptional psychic talents to see that they had only recently embarked on a new relationship together. 

"Could I get some ketchup with this, please?" he asked, pointing at his bacon and eggs. Gloria obligingly lifted the condiments basket from the nearest table and placed it in front of him, one eyebrow raised enquiringly to see if he wanted anything else. 

"Thank you" said Johnny, reaching for the familiar shape of the Heinz bottle. The rim of the neck looked slightly sticky and he hesitated, momentarily aware of a slight heat that emanated from it before his fingers closed around the neck and the vision began.

It was a little bit like.....well, many times Johnny had tried to find an adequate description for what having a vision felt like. Bruce was endlessly curious. It was like one of those dreams where your smooth passage along the sidewalk is interrupted by losing your footing as you step off the curb. Things seemed to fall away....

...........and be.......replaced. A house of playing cards falling through a solid table and putting themselves back into order on the floor under the same table. A moment of free-fall, inside an aeroplane in a parabolic dive - being lifted upwards and falling downwards at the same time. Horrifying, terrifying, madly exciting, leaving him sweating, pulse racing - or enervated, stimulated and breathless, every nerve end tingling. 

Where the hell.....?

The last remaining fragments of the biology teacher that was John Smith recognised the bitter taste and smell of...yes, it was definitely blood. Very warm blood. His eyes had remained open through the transition phase of the vision and saw a dull, dark red and pink surrounding - not lit from his point of view but with a tiny amount of light somehow filtering in from outside of wherever he was. He was aware of movement, and noise, voices perhaps, but dull and indistinct, like noises heard when you are underwater. In fact, Johnny decided, I _am_ underwater. Or in some fluid of some kind. He "glanced" around, trying to find more clues to where this ketchup bottle vision had taken him.

As abruptly as it had started, the vision ended. Johnny found himself back where he started, the condiment bottle still gripped tightly in his right hand. Gingerly he prised his fingers away and wiped them on a napkin - the bottle was indeed sticky with the residue of a hundred careless pourings. Pretending to pay particular attention to the grime on his index finger and thumb, he shot a covert glance at the young woman at the next table. There was a dollop of ketchup on her plate. Johnny was reasonably sure that the vision must belong in some way to her. In spite of himself, his curiosity was definitely piqued. He reached for the pepper pot - nothing. The salt cellar was similarly cold. He had discovered that by hovering the palm of his hand a fraction of an inch above items, he could sometimes detect a faint warmth from objects that gave him an indication of an impending vision. He certainly preferred this technique to a random sort of grabbing. Yessss..the serviette dispenser.....

__

Warmth. Comfort. Blood. (Is this some vampire thing? thought Johnny)_ Muffled voices. Movement. A human pulse, very loud, very close. Liquid. More movement - but almost imperceptible, as if caught by the corner of one's eye and gone by the time you focus your full attention on it. A feeling of connection.._

There it was. Gone. Exasperated, Johnny turned his attention back to his breakfast before it got cold.

When listening to speech, the human brain needs only to hear roughly 30% of what is being said in order to understand. Experience and hypothetical reasoning fills in the gaps quite easily. As the conscious parts of Johnny's brain rallied round his confused "dead zone", he suddenly realised what it was he had been experiencing in his ketchup-coloured vision. 

The woman on the next table was in the process of becoming pregnant.

Startled by this sudden revelation, Johnny stared uninhibitedly at her. She had no idea! Not one clue!

The inappropriateness of this intimacy struck Johnny and he masked a nervous laugh with a cough into his politely balled fist. A moment or two before, he had been inside a human womb watching life take its first few tentative steps. 

Is that what was happening inside Sarah's body while the rescue teams were busy cutting his own from the wreckage of his car?

The morning's earlier melancholy returned unbidden and sat with him at his lonely table.

To be continued......... 


End file.
